


Ashes

by goldheart



Category: Yuri!!! on Ice (Anime)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Cinderella Fusion, Alternate Universe - Fairy Tale, Angst, Homophobia, M/M, Multi, Prince Victor Nikiforov, Prince!Victor, Teen Victor Nikiforov, Wildly AU, Yuri Plisetsky makes a minor cameo, can you spot it?, eros!Yuuri, this is not a happy story
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-20
Updated: 2017-01-23
Packaged: 2018-09-18 20:25:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,953
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9401582
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/goldheart/pseuds/goldheart
Summary: Wherein Viktor is Prince Charming, Yuuri isnothis Cinderella, and, like true fairy tales, happily ever after is quite subjective.





	1. Ashes

**Author's Note:**

> This is... well. A class assignment wherein I wrote fanfiction and my teacher was none the wiser. *Shrugs* Give me free rein to adapt a fairy tale and I will write gay, angsty... whatever this is? I'm sorry-not-sorry. 
> 
> Based upon the Brothers Grimm's version of Cinderella.

Once upon a time, the wife of a rich man lay on her deathbed and implored her only daughter, the beautiful Eleonora, to be pious and kind. The girl heeded her mother’s wishes for all of her life, for she was good at heart and devout in her faith. Heaven rewards those who are obedient and virtuous. Eleonora was destined to receive a happily ever after.

Heaven does not reward those who are disobedient and rebellious, who do not bend to their roles and in prayer for deliverance.

It goes like this:

In the far reaches of the North, where the snow begins to gather in drifts of elegant, frozen white, the king’s heir thinks not of the duties of a prince, of hearing petitions and managing the treasury and keeping alliances strong. He thinks of the tutor he evades as he flees into the woods. For a breath of fresh air, the boy tells his father. For clarity.

There will be a great feast held in his honour this evening, with singing and dancing and all of the land’s eligible maidens lined up to shake his hand and steal his attentions. Today is his birthday.

He is sixteen years old, and by the urging of his father, ready to take a wife.

He pushes his horse forward faster, faster, faster. If he could flee, run away into the sunset and never come back, would he do it? He knows this is his father’s solution to his sorrows, as it was his father’s solution before him. Women, they say, are both the answer to every question and the instigator of many more. Today they mean to cut the length of hair he wears in a loose braid down his back––a childish whim, his father had assured his concerned advisors, a phase of silliness––into something proper and presentable for a young man. Then they will dress him in his finest robes to present like a doll before the hungry eyes of girls salivating for jewels and a crown.

The thought of marriage to such a maiden makes him want to throw up.

Or any maiden, really.

The disconcerted prince lets his horse carry him far away, deep into the woods. He gets his fresh air but receives no clarity for the problem he knows cannot be solved by the prospect of a wife.

At the sound of a freshwater brook carrying away the early snow, the prince veers their course towards it. He dismounts from the mare on the bank and pats her neck affectionately, distantly, as he offers her a handful of oats from his palm and brushes the snow from her hair with his fingertips. Closing his eyes, he feels the tears gather on his lashes, dripping off into the drifts in quiet little pleas for help.

The forest responds.

The air shifts in anticipation, growing heavy and tight. The leaves rustle. Even his horse lifts her head, waiting for something, anything.

A pale arm, decorated in glittering ice and soft swaths of black fabric, slips around his shoulders and draws him close.

The prince buries his face in the faerie’s chest and drops his porcelain mask in tiny, quiet sobs. Normally he is quite charismatic, charming and poised and full of flirty smiles––all things a good prince and suitor should be. However, for the people, he is an excellent performer. Right now, he is just himself, just a lonely boy named Viktor in the arms of the person he loves most but could never marry. Such is the way of monarchy and society. Such is the value of expectation.

‘Why are you so sad?’ the faerie asks the prince. ‘You look as if someone has died.’

Viktor’s tears flow faster.

‘Because I must leave you,’ he answers, barely a whisper.

* * *

Viktor watches the girls in their pretty dresses from behind a curtain. Anxiously, he scrapes a gloved hand through his newly-shorn hair, his head uncomfortably light without the weight of his silvery braid. They’re waiting for him. They will insist that he dances with someone, anyone, everyone. He swallows bile and the lump in his throat. When he closes his eyes, he thinks of Yuuri.

He opens them again; when he does, he is Prince Charming, the most eligible bachelor in the kingdom, and tonight, he woos a bride.

He weaves his way through the crowd, smiling coyly and offering warm compliments as he goes. Tick, tock, goes the clock. He must dance with someone. But with whom? He cannot make himself extend an offer. He knows all of these maidens. Madame Baranovskaya’s daughters discreetly attempt to follow him as he makes his rounds of the ballroom, and he blanches at the thought of dancing for even a moment with girls who have eyes as hungry for him as theirs.

And then he sees her. She is a latecomer, swathed in shimmering silver and glittering gold, draped in a net of white gems like teardrops. The maiden looks a foreign princess. He does not know her. She does not even seem to know herself, demurely looking at her feet as she descends the staircase with hundreds of strangers’ eyes locked on her as they twitter their jealousy. She is beautiful, he admits. Perhaps it is the way the gems sparkle like ice, or the way her extravagant dress reflects the light like faerie’s wings, but though she bears no resemblance, he is abruptly reminded of Yuuri’s laughter, Yuuri’s glittering eyes, Yuuri’s magic in the wind.

He extends his hand to her, this girl he does not know, and dances the night away with her, much to the dismay of the other guests. He forgets to dance with others. She does not let go of his hand. The other men wish for their chance to devour her whole. The other girls want to take her place. But she is a quiet, blushing girl with nothing to say beyond the gratitude in her blue eyes, and because of that god-given gift, Viktor can close his eyes under the guise of moving with the music and offer her the security of a prince’s embrace. In exchange, he lets the ballroom fall away from him, the murmuring din of the crowd falling to silence as he imagined fallen leaves under his feet, Yuuri’s rare laughter in his ears.  

The clock strikes midnight and the girl flees. Suddenly left unmoored in a sea of hungry fish, Viktor trails after her, his voice curling around a thank you that he cannot say, for she runs from him like he is the devil. He tries to follow, tries to convey that he wants no more than to express the same gratitude for this reprieve that she seemed to be offering him, but he loses her to the night and the swallow of ashes on the wind.

She comes again the next night and the night after that, each night dressed in clothes that are not her’s, but her’s all the same. He knows these things, has recognised divine intervention in its basest form since the day he stumbled upon it in the woods. Each night, Viktor dances with her and loses himself in fantasy, and each night she flees him like he is a lion and she the sheep before he can thank her for her time. Finally, fed up with this unwanted game of cat and mouse, the prince orders the palace steps coated in pitch to slow her down enough that he might make his point. It does slow her, but not enough to stop her, and Viktor is left with a shoe he might just throw off the tallest tower and into the damned river.

‘Vitya,’ his father booms instead, his grin clever and dangerous when he spots the shoe clutched disdainfully in Viktor’s hands, ‘I order you to find your bride and bring her back.’

Viktor goes cold.

* * *

 ‘What do I do?’ Viktor wails, playing up the drama to the max. There’s nothing else to do but be dramatic. He’s lost his own game. He paces, he screams into the emptiness of the woods, and he throws the slipper at a tree with vicious anger.

The faerie watching him with concern in his eyes picks up the discarded slipper, turns it between curious fingers, and hums with thought.

‘Here, Vitya,’ Yuuri says, pressing it into Viktor’s limp hands. Magic dances over the slipper from the faerie’s cold fingertips. ’Watch me closely. Take this last chance I can give you. None shall fit this shoe. When you have done your rounds and failed in your search, come back to me.’

Viktor tightens his grip around the enchanted slipper and offers a watery, hopeful smile.

* * *

 ‘Whomsoever the shoe fits shall be my bride,’ Viktor announces brashly, confidently. He trusts in Yuuri’s magic. He thinks he is incredibly clever, that he’s just won this foolish game, that this distraction will buy him more time. It’s doomed to end with his unhappiness, anyways, so why not stretch it out?

He rides out with his father’s guards the next day, the shoe haphazardly thrown in a saddlebag. Every man around him has a hawk’s eye trained on his every move.

He wonders, briefly, what will happen if, _when,_ he does not bring the girl back, and his mood falls a hair’s width. What would his father do? Hold another ball, then again and again? Force him into marriage? There must be an heir. A whole kingdom would fall to shambles because a boy cannot fall out of love with the fey creature who seduced him, who waited in the woods for the lonely, lost boy and gave him friendship, love, kindness, beauty. His confident smile fades.

This is punishment, for disobeying the laws of the universe and falling in love during the witching hour. But it’s hard to believe someone like Yuuri is evil, that loving Yuuri is a sin.

He looks back and sees glittering brown eyes in the trees, a hand adorned with ice crystals, dark hair and twisted lips and the determined look of a faerie near-scorned. Yuuri is putting all trust in him.

Viktor swallows hard and starts his half-hearted search. Another day putting it off would be better than no days at all.

He holds the shoe before countless girls, so eager to yank it onto their feet that some almost rip the seams of it. Everyone wants to be a princess, but none will be. Yuuri’s magic ensures that.

He’d know her immediately. He’s not as stupid as most people think. He has never heard of her before, never recognised her, does not know her father. He will not find her here. But if he looks like he’s trying, and he just happens to not find her, well… that might buy him some time after all.

He gawks when Madame Baranovskaya’s eldest daughter, a mildly pretty but haughty girl with greed like a film over her eyes, steps out of the house with the damned shoe on her foot. She wobbles a little and smiles sweetly at him. Helplessly, Viktor looks to his right, to the guard standing silently by his side. The guard shrugs, a bit at a loss, too.

‘Do I have to?’ Viktor hisses, pale as a sheet.

‘Those are the rules,’ the guard answers. ‘ _Your_ rules. Apologies, Your Highness.’

Wordlessly, stiffly, Viktor lifts the girl up onto his horse, trying hard not to wince at the feeling of her greedy hands clinging to his midsection as he reluctantly turns and starts riding.

A white dove by the hazel tree in the front yard cocks its head at the sight. It’s almost angry. ‘Idiot,’ he scolds. Viktor starts at the sound, slowing his horse, but no one else seems to have heard it. ‘Look down at the blood, for the pretty girl’s lied. Are you really so stupid as to believe she’s your bride?’

‘Of course she’s not my bride,’ Viktor responds, affronted. The maiden squawks behind him. He looks anyways and sees that the dove is right; the shoe is nearly brimming with blood. It’s a wonder the girl hasn’t passed out and fallen right off of his horse. Relieved at the deception, the bend in the rule, Viktor turns around, races back to the little home, and helps her disdainful mother bandage the girl’s stub where she’d cut off her toe to fit the shoe.

Viktor holds the bloody shoe between two fingers, trying his best to keep from looking disgusted and failing. Madame Baranovskaya offers to clean it, and he immediately lets her remove the blasted thing from his sight. He waits patiently for her to bring it back for the other daughter, prettier and meaner than the first, and loses himself staring out the window at the forest. He thinks he sees Yuuri’s dark hair, hears faerie laughter on the wind.

And he nearly flips a table when the other daughter walks into the room, her footsteps much more even than her sister’s, wearing pretty white socks and a giggle that makes Viktor want to throw himself into the sun. And so, without a choice against his foolhardy words, Viktor takes the second daughter onto the back of his horse and sets off again.

The dove almost falls off the branch laughing. ‘You moron! Look at the shoe she took. Since her sock’s stained red, try not to wince; she’s not the bride for you, idiot prince.’

Viktor wordlessly catches the girl before she tumbles off the back of his horse.

* * *

 ‘You don’t have any other daughters?’ Viktor asks carefully, hopefully. He crosses his fingers behind his back. He prays.

Madame Baranovskaya offers the most vehement of denials but finally mentions the kitchen maid, and Viktor swears under his breath. At the pointed look from his father’s guard, he sighs heavily. ‘Bring her to me, regardless.’

His heart sinks through his stomach, through his feet, perhaps clean to the other side of the planet at the sight of her, face pink from scrubbing at it, plain smock grey and covered in ash. He pities the sight of her; the poor girl looks like she hasn’t had a good night’s sleep in years. But he’d know those earnest eyes immediately. He’s really, really not that stupid.

Or maybe he is.

He prays to every deity he knows and all the ones he doesn’t, every single kind of pagan creature the priests tell him are abominations, evildoers and servants of Satan. He begs for Yuuri’s magic to hold. He locks eyes with her and offers to place the cleaned slipper on her foot.

He nearly begins to weep when it fits her like the gloves on his hands.

But he has a duty. He is a selfish, selfish boy, but he is also a man, now, a prince, and he knows when he has lost. With all eyes on him, half disbelieving and half expectant, Viktor becomes Prince Charming and smiles at the girl who can’t seem to believe what’s going on, her eyes fluttering with surprise.

He lifts her on the back of his horse and rides past the hazel tree, and the dove, who had been ready to mock him as he rode past, is silent a moment too long.

‘Look there, take your fall,’ he finally says. ‘You’ve found your pretty bride from the damned ball.’

* * *

‘What do I call you?’ Charming asks later that night, when he stands at his blushing bride-to-be’s doorstep and sees her with her golden hair brushed out in silky waves, wearing a simple blue dress that serves as a reminder that she is human.

She is not Yuuri. Ah, the irony of that. Viktor knows Yuuri’s favourite food, Yuuri’s favourite spot by the river, what Yuuri sounds like when singing and that Yuuri’s snores sound like a piglet’s and that Yuuri can flip from being the most seductive creature on the planet to the meekest, shyest, humblest person he’s ever met. And he cannot be with Yuuri, but he must marry this girl he used like a doll as a substitute, this girl whose name he doesn’t even know.

‘Elya,’ she says quietly, and smiles like all of her dreams have come true. And who can blame her? Rags to riches, and she didn’t even ask for it. She’s blessed. ‘And what do I call you, Your Highness?’

Charming smiles easily. ‘My name is Viktor,’ he says. His voice does not break.

* * *

 When Viktor flees into the woods on their wedding night, when the gentle and innocent Eleonora has fallen asleep in their bed with nary a protest about not completing their consummation, he takes with him his sword and the wedding ring that feels branded onto his finger. There, by the brook, he finds his Yuuri weeping, crystalline drops falling heavily into the water with the faerie’s shudders.

‘I’m sorry,’ Yuuri sobs. ‘I tried to stop it, and I failed you. I’m not strong enough. I’m not good enough. Look what I cost you!’

Viktor takes a hitching breath and pulls Yuuri into his arms. ‘Yuuri, Yuuri, I love you, I’m sorry.’

But who ever said it was Viktor’s fault for falling in love with him _?_ That is his big secret, his greatest shame! What a shame it is, indeed, that the heir to the throne, the bride’s Prince Charming, would never love a woman.

It started like this:

Once upon a time, a Russian prince stole the Faerie Queen’s daughter to be his wife. Eventually, the faerie bore him a son and fled into the night, back to her mother’s kingdom, and was never seen again. In revenge for the ravishing of her daughter, the Queen bid her loyal servant, the abnormally gentle _perelesnyk_ Yuuri, to seduce the youngest daughter of the royal family and lure her to her death. The task was meant to be simple: Enchant a princess, and dance with her until she dropped dead.

But there were no princesses in the royal family, and Yuuri’s heart, fragile as glass, was easily swayed. For the next closest to a princess is a prince, and Yuuri had long admired Prince Viktor from the confines of his woods. Things did not go as planned. Yuuri seduced the prince, as instructed, but gave his glass heart up in return.

Finally, when Yuuri’s sobs have faded to nothing and he is just as weary as Viktor has felt for the past three whirlwind days, the faerie seems to remember what he is, and what he is is an imp of the forest, a mischief-maker, a seducer of princes. Drawing himself up, he digs his fingers under Viktor’s glove and tugs it away to examine the golden ring the prince has covered in his shame. With a red flush high on his cheeks, Yuuri pulls it off of Viktor’s finger. He slips it onto his own before he dances back, back into the trees. There, he meets Viktor’s wide eyes, holds them, and kisses the ring softly, his eyelashes fluttering. As the prince watches, the forest opens its embrace for the faerie and swallows him back into its folds.

Viktor does not see Yuuri again.

* * *

 Eleonora, devout, obedient, quiet Elya, believes herself in love because Viktor is beautiful, charming, engaging, and kind to her. It is a novel sensation, after years and years of abuse. She, at least, carries no greed in her bones, and so the reward of fine silks and vast winter gardens and the tiara tucked into her golden curls is well-deserved. Viktor does not have the courage to tell her the truth. He has the heart to treat her as the porcelain doll she is, to let her mourn her mother on his shoulder in the early hours of the morning and to teach her how to be a princess.

Viktor, rebellious, dramatic, broken Viktor, believes he has found a friend in his bride. Eleonora is kind, understanding, and a fantastic listener. She only smiles demurely at his flamboyant antics when he throws himself over chairs in despair or throws mean jabs at his father’s disapproving men alongside his charming smile. She has a good sense of humour, too, once he coaxes it out of her. It is a comfortable transition, into becoming a married man.

But underneath Eleonora’s shell, Viktor finds her soul has been slowly extracted from her body through years of drudgery and maltreatment. In truth, she _was_ Elya; now, though, she has been replaced with the hollow Zolushka, the girl of ashes. They have drained the life from her, and so she drains the life from him to replace it, starved for touch. It is exhausting, playing Prince Charming constantly, and so Viktor, who could spend years counting his blessings, finds himself slipping further into the emptiness of Prince Charming as well. While Charming steals the love of swooning maidens to fashion a pretty necklace for his gentle wife, weak, selfish, prideful Viktor retreats further into himself, lost to the depression sinking into his bones.

He dons his smiling porcelain mask every time he wakes up and feels it dig a little deeper into his skin. It makes him perfect. And so he presents perfect Viktor, Prince Charming, to the approving eyes of his aging father and the judging court. They believe that their prayers have been answered, that Viktor has seen sense, that his homosexuality has been effectively erased by his naïve bride.

At the height of winter, the court celebrates their gentle queen-to-be’s first pregnancy. Viktor receives countless claps on the back and congratulations. He laughs. He raises a toast to the child Eleonora carries between her slender hips. He dances. He makes merry. His smile never fades.

He is sixteen.

When the clock strikes midnight and the castle has already been swathed in the heavy layers of deep sleep, Viktor fondly kisses the slumbering Eleonora’s hair, climbs to the top of the highest tower, and steps off of it.

The wind howls with Yuuri’s grief.

* * *

Human stories reward the virtuous and devout. Among themselves, they speak of the story of Zolushka, the rich man’s daughter who suffered under her stepmother, slept amongst the cinders, and rose again as a princess. In the fantasies of young girls, the white dove gives Zolushka the dress of her dreams and presents her with her chance at happiness with a ball and a prince who only has eyes for her. It starts with ‘once upon a time’ and ends with ‘happily ever after.’ And yes, for a story that ends with a wedding, it’s easy to imagine that they lived happily ever after. But humans are fond of lies to make their points. It is difficult to explain the complexities of truth to a child.

In the North, the forest speaks honestly, whispering such tales between the rustle of the leaves and the screech of the wind. Winter has never been forgiving, and so the faeries slander the heavens and the people in memory of their distant cousin and their beloved _perelesnyk._

Empty Zolushka lives preserved in glass like an expensive doll while her unhappy husband shatters on the ground. The desire to please Heaven costs the North her Prince Charming.

And so it is told. And so the forest speaks. And so the people do not listen.


	2. Dust

Yuuri has adored Viktor since he first saw the prince dance. Viktor was unabashedly fluid with his charms, placing his feet as delicately as a girl’s as he succumbed to the forest’s song. He wore his hair as long as a faerie’s, let it flow around him like the water that seemed to direct his hands, the curl of his back. When he spoke, his words of kindness and devotion were a balm to the nervous faerie’s fluttering heart, previously untouched by mankind. Gentle Yuuri, weak to Viktor’s beauty and charm, wound the prince around his finger with his seductive invitation and let the human sweep him away. 

When the Faerie Queen’s beloved servant granted the prince his glass heart, she watched long enough to see in the young Viktor the frivolity of her kind, the easy grace and mischievous humour of faerie blood in his veins. And so her hatred of him dissolved into fondness, and Viktor was welcomed into her kingdom with great celebration. The forest sings in his presence, for at their queen’s bidding and their Yuuri’s adoration, the faeries too rejoice in the company of the Russian prince. 

And so they cluster about him when he comes, weaving flowers into his fey-silver locks and sprinkling magic over his clothes until they glimmer. They love him because he loves their Yuuri wholeheartedly. 

Yuuri listens to Viktor’s tales of the human court with great enthusiasm. He smiles, laughs, and speaks more than he has in all his long existence. Slowly, accidentally, he steals Viktor from his birthright for himself, completing one half of a job and butchering the second. 

But the faerie kingdom holds no power to the will of the heavens, and just like that, Viktor is pried from Yuuri’s greedy fingers. Desperately, Yuuri makes a promise, weaves his magic like his life depends on it, and clings to Viktor with all his strength. Divine intervention cleaves through his efforts as easily as the knife that sliced through Viktor’s hair, letting his pretty locks drift to the floor with his consent. Yuuri watches the enchantment on the shoe dissolve into nothing as Viktor slides it onto the girl’s foot, confident it won't fit. He is wrong. 

Jealousy drives Yuuri to steal Viktor’s wedding ring and wear it like a trophy. She may have his body, but Yuuri has his heart, wrapped solidly and heavily around his finger like heavy gold. At the discontented bidding of his queen, Yuuri melts back into the forest, his shaky confidence settling completely on his role as an incubus. Every  _ perelesnyk  _ has broken the bonds of a marriage at least once before. This time should be no different. 

When Yuuri attempts to go to Viktor that night, however, he takes a step towards the newlywed’s window and feels his skin burn. He yelps, leaping back and staring in confusion at the blisters forming on his feet. Then he tries again, slipping onto the breeze and finding that the air itself seems to scald him when he attempts to cross an invisible barrier. The reason becomes clear with every agonising, burning step: The clever king has laced the grounds of his palace with iron, ordering it woven into the unsuspecting couple’s clothing and forged into their crowns. 

At a loss for what to do, Yuuri watches from afar as Viktor’s enthusiasm dies and his eyes go blank and filmy with depression, sagging under the weight of his unhappiness when Zolushka’s back is turned. 

‘He thinks I’ve abandoned him,’ Yuuri says despairingly to the faeries who used to join him in his clandestine meetings with the Russian prince. ‘He must think I’ve treated this like a game. Look!’ Yuuri weeps at the sight of Viktor’s depression, and eventually, the fairies leave him to pine alone. 

‘Yuuri,’ the Faerie Queen implores of him daily. ‘Return to my court and brighten it with your smiles. You are sorely missed.’ 

Daily, Yuuri refuses to budge from his observing point, his eyes locked on his Prince from far away. 

As Viktor sinks into himself, Yuuri begins, also, to fade. The enticing colour drains from his pale cheeks, his ice-black hair wilts, and his sultry eyes dull to flat brown. He witnesses, clever creature, the slow, agonising decline of a prince, spread over many months of brilliant acting and the fulfilment of Zolushka’s happily ever after. And when Yuuri becomes colourless, all of his warmth seeping into the ground, he watches as the announcement reaches Viktor’s sensitive ears like a dagger. A puppet on rotting strings, the prince wanders through his day, hooks tugging his bright smile up at every congratulations and the puppeteer’s paints putting a glazed, dumb look in his blue eyes. The humans see it as a young father-to-be’s shocked excitement. Yuuri recognises it as Death’s lifeless gaze. 

He surges to his feet and burns alive as he scrambles to get to Viktor, to drag him away from the punishment of happily ever after and back into the loving, honest embrace of the forest. 

‘Viktor!’ Yuuri cries into the night. ‘Viktor, please!’

His screams and sobs echo through the air, bouncing harmlessly off of the king’s precautions like flower petals. Desperately, Yuuri throws himself at the iron line until the Faerie Queen herself scorches her hands to pull him away before he kills himself in the attempt. 

Yuuri can only watch the fall, his glass heart shattering with Viktor’s bones against the unforgiving ground. 

He relives the moment every time he closes his eyes, screaming his beautiful voice to hoarseness on the breeze in a wail twice as chilling as any banshee’s. His most precious dream, the faeries whisper, is the one where he gladly sacrifices his magic and the promise of eternity to cross the line and catch Viktor in his arms, cradling him close and never letting go. So Yuuri stops sleeping out of dread, does not eat or work, and does not move from the prince’s freshly-dug grave until he fades to nothing but the tears soaking into the ground. 

Ashes to ashes, dust to dust. They dance together on the breeze that curls lovingly around the silence of the graveyard. Telling, how even pious Zolushka had ceased in her graveside prayers out of her fear of the faerie draped over Viktor’s grave. So easy for humans to forget.

But the forest never forgets. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Find me on Tumblr at russianfeya.tumblr.com
> 
> The author is a slut for comments and will think about yours all day if you leave one :)


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